At the World Robot Conference, the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, and the Global Industrial Internet Conference, various forms of robots are eye-opening. With the development of intelligent manufacturing, the wave of robots has swept the world, and China has also made strategic deployment in industrial, service, special and other robot fields, becoming an important force to promote the global robot industry.
Hao Yucheng, member of the National Intelligent Manufacturing Expert Committee: "It is a strategic emerging industry and has been attached importance by various countries around the world. In terms of basic industries, it is not only the technical equipment of manufacturing, but also the infrastructure of social and service industries, so all countries attach great importance to it."
In recent years, China's robot industry has developed rapidly, and the whole industrial chain system has been basically formed. In terms of scale, China has become the world's largest robot consumer, with revenue of more than 170 billion yuan in 2022, the world's first industrial robot installed capacity, and the density of manufacturing robots has reached 392 units per 10,000 workers. From the distribution point of view, China's robot industry is concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta region, among which, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai's robot industry is the strongest, Dongguan, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Suzhou, Foshan robot industry has gradually developed and grown, Guangzhou, Qingdao robot industry is full of vitality. These areas have a good foundation in terms of talent, funds, policies and so on.
The survey found that in this wave of robots, humanoid robots have become one of the focuses. Companies are rolling out humanoid robots. So why is everyone focusing on this track?
The industry generally believes that humanoid robots are the easiest to integrate into human society, and can be used in many scenes such as medical care, entertainment, education, and home economics, so the development of humanoid robots at home and abroad is put on the agenda. As one of the leading robot industry in China, Beijing also regards it as the core of the "1+4" robot product system. Among them, 1 refers to humanoid robots, 4 refers to medical health, collaboration, special, logistics four categories of robots, the overall idea is to use 1 to drive 4.
Su Guobin, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology: "Because humanoid robots are the integrators in the robot industry, whether it is the integration of technology, or the integration of all upstream and downstream, humanoid robots can reflect the highest integration of technology, so Beijing develops humanoid robots, taking it as the core."
As a universal robot, humanoid robots can effectively drive the development of upstream and downstream industries, and the global market size is expected to exceed one trillion yuan in 2035. Star Moving Era is a young startup. They developed the humanoid robot "Little Star", in order to make it move, the motor is the key.
It's not enough to move, but to know how to move. This requires a smart brain to direct, which is the algorithm. To do this, researchers first need to simulate a digital robot on a computer.
In order to support the development of the robot industry, including humanoid robots, Beijing has released the Action Plan for the innovation and development of the robot industry (2023-2025), which will set up a robot industry fund of 10 billion yuan, in addition to the construction of a humanoid robot industry innovation center.
Gao Shaoxiong, Level 4 researcher of the Intelligent Equipment Office of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology: "The innovation center aims to achieve the small-batch production and application of humanoid robots, focuses on creating basic conditions such as general intelligent underlying software and interfaces, and general hardware development supporting facilities, and focuses on breaking through key technologies such as general humanoid robot prototypes and general artificial intelligence large models."
In addition to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places have also released similar action plans, all of which include the development of humanoid robots. For example, Shenzhen proposed to carry out the research and development and application of universal embodied intelligent robots, and accelerate the establishment of humanoid robot manufacturing innovation center; Shanghai has proposed to build an international algorithm innovation base to accelerate the development of humanoid robots.
Hao Yucheng: "Our country's current layout of humanoid robots, the following strategic initiative to lay out the development of the industry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also attaches great importance to it, and is now preparing to promote the development of humanoid robots guidelines to determine the development goals and main tasks of the industry."
Humanoid robots are just a fast-growing segment of China's robotics industry. In addition, with the rapid development of e-commerce, logistics robots have also become one of the key development directions. Alibaba, Jingdong, SF Express and other industry leaders are actively layout smart logistics. The Sky Wolf and Earth Wolf intelligent logistics robots developed by Jingdong Logistics have functions such as handling, palletizing and sorting. In terms of division of labor, Jingdong is mainly responsible for the design and research and development of logistics robots, and then the procurement of parts from the upstream and downstream supply chain for assembly and production. This kind of alliance model has obvious promoting effect on driving the development of the whole industry.
At present, the sky Wolf, the Wolf robot has been put into use in a number of Jingdong logistics centers across the country, and only Beijing Asia No. 1 shipments reach hundreds of thousands of units per day, and the selection efficiency is increased by 3-5 times, and the accuracy rate is as high as 99.9%. In the future, Beijing will set up logistics robot industry groups on behalf of leading enterprises such as Jingdong Logistics to drive the development of this industry.
Gao Shaoxiong: "(group development) complementary advantages, the formation of a more balanced and reasonable business distribution of the industrial pattern; On the other hand, it is conducive to carrying out joint research and development, and sharing the risk of R&D investment with the strength of the group."
In the future, with the promotion of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the transformation of China's manufacturing industry to the direction of intelligence will drive the continued rapid growth of intelligent logistics and mobile robots. At present, China has cultivated a number of logistics robot industry unicorn enterprises such as Beijing Jizhijia, Shanghai Kuaicang, Shenzhen Hailu Innovation.
With the acceleration of the aging process of China's population, the medical robot industry will also enter a period of rapid development. China is one of the largest medical device markets in the world, with great potential for development. Baihuiweikang is a company specializing in the development and production of surgical robots. The neurosurgical robot they developed can perform intracranial surgery through a tiny hole with an accuracy of less than 0.3 millimeters.
To do neurosurgery, it is generally required that the positioning Angle error is less than 1 mm, and usually only doctors with more than 10 years of experience can do such surgery. The emergence of surgical robots has greatly reduced the difficulty of surgery and won precious rescue time for patients.
Liu Da, founder and chairman of Beijing Baihui Weikang Technology Co., LTD. : "Whether it is young doctors and experts, thanks to this set of navigation and positioning devices, they will soon be able to operate, because they do not rely on people's own ability, but more rely on the intelligence and automation of robots."
For a long time, the vast majority of China's medical robots rely on imports, and the cost is extremely high. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop domestic medical robots and drive the upgrading of medical devices to the high-end. According to the "14th Five-Year Plan" for the Development of medical equipment industry, by 2035, China will raise the research and development, manufacturing and application of medical equipment to the world's advanced level. In the future, with the construction of smart hospitals, there will be more and more original smart medical equipment such as guidance, outpatient screening, and auxiliary testing. At present, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou and other cities have clear plans and investments in medical robots.
Gao Shaoxiong: "Beijing will improve the surgical assistance ability of surgical robots through the implementation of 100 new robot projects, and implement 100 demonstration projects for application scenarios for medical applications."
In the layout of China's robot industry, special robots are also one of the key directions. In extreme events such as floods, earthquakes and fires, special robots can often replace people to complete tasks and play a key role. Ling Tian Intelligence is a company specializing in the development and production of special robots. In the company's showroom, the most eye-catching is the firefighting robot.
Since 2017, the scale of China's special robot market has been expanding, with an average annual growth rate of 30.7%. Taking Beijing as an example, there are no less than 300 enterprise scientific research units engaged in the research and development of special robots, so Beijing will improve the industry concentration in the next step and focus on supporting leading enterprises.
Gao Shaoxiong: "The typical characteristic of special robots is that the business direction is very scattered, and for special robots, we should pay attention to whether these enterprises have achieved high quality and high efficiency in their respective segments, support enterprises to specialize, do fine, and become stronger in the segments, and support enterprises to gather and develop."
It should be noted that although China's robot industry has made great progress, there is still a certain gap with developed countries in terms of innovation ability, talent training, key components and so on. In order to solve these problems, China has issued a number of policy measures, including the "14th Five-Year Plan" robot industry Development Plan "and" Robot + "application action Implementation Plan". According to the plan, by 2025, China is expected to become the source of global robot technology innovation, high-end manufacturing agglomeration and integrated application of new heights.
As a booming new quality productivity, the robot industry continues to innovate core technologies, accelerate the development of high-end manufacturing, and deepen the scene of "robot + industry application", which has covered 65 industry categories and 206 industry middle classes. Facing the future, the innovative development of the robot industry will provide more powerful support for accelerating the construction of a manufacturing power, a digital China, and promoting Chinese-style modernization.
